


Fathers, Daughters and Dragons

by ChronicBookworm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8877025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/pseuds/ChronicBookworm
Summary: “Holy shitballs,” breathed Esilmere, “that’s a real fucking dragon!”“Thanks for pointing it out,” Kaylie said. “I wouldn’t have noticed on my own.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dizmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizmo/gifts).



So, she’d met her father. He was… well, he was exactly as she’d expected, and at the same time, not at all. Yes, he was a womaniser, a scoundrel who would seduce a woman young enough to be his daughter (she’d forgive him for not knowing that she  _was_ in fact his daughter when he’d tried to seduce her. She’d give him that much. But that didn’t count for much, really), who would carelessly go through lovers and discard them when he was tired of them. But, she now saw what had her mother so stuck on a man she’d had a brief fling with twenty-odd years back, how he had the faith and support of a cleric of Sarenrae, of all the gods! Her father was, at heart, a good man. And she didn’t know how to feel about that.

Kaylie first memories were of soft lullabies hummed under her mother’s breath while she worked. She had vague memories of a box of some sort that was her playpen and bed all in one, and she knows that money was tight even then. Most of her childhood she went to bed hungry. Kymal was not an easy place to be when you have no money. So she made sure she got some. She had nimble fingers, guile, and a very charming face – more than one fine lady of Kymal had taken just one look at her face and discovered that her heart was apparently not made of ice, after all. It was something Kaylie exploited to the best of her ability.

She doesn’t remember her father mattering very much in those early years. Plenty of children in the rougher parts of Kymal lacked fathers, and the ones that had one didn’t seem much better off, to be honest. So her feelings about her father, at least at first, were along the lines of “good riddance”. Then Kaylie got a recorder from a Wintermas charity drive, and it turned out she had inherited her father’s musical talents. And her mother would simply not. Let. It. Go. 

Suddenly everything Kaylie did reminded her mother of Scanlan Shorthalt, the man who had abandoned her. Sybil still clung to the hope that he would come back for them, but Kaylie knew better. Scanlan Shorthalt was a dick of the first order, and even if he did come back, she wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, she almost tossed her recorder in a well, because of him. But music touched something in her, and it was impossible to stay away from it for too long. So instead she was determined to make the recorder, and then the flute, her own. She’d be  _better_ than him, so that when people thought of ‘that gnome bard’, over all of Tal’Dorei, it would be  _her_ they thought of, not him.

And well, she had proven herself better than him. She’d beaten him at his own game, and won 2000 gold because of it too. She just wasn’t sure it mattered as much now. 

They were headed south, towards Westruun. She tried to keep her comments about Scanlan to a minimum, not let the others know how much he occupied her thoughts. She probably wasn’t very successful, given the looks Dr. Dranzel gave her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

They’d almost made it to Westruun when a giant shadow flew overhead, and they ducked into the woods off the side of the road. 

“Holy shitballs,” breathed Esilmere, “that’s a real fucking dragon!”

“Thanks for pointing it out,” Kaylie said. “I wouldn’t have noticed on my own.” She hadn’t seen dragons outside storybooks or songs, but the figure was unmistakeable. Even flying high up in the air, it was massive. It hadn’t seemed to bother with them, but they still came to a silent agreement to carry on next to the road, not on it, taking what cover they could find in the flatlands around Westruun. 

They hid in the bushes overnight, discussing what to do. On the one hand, the dragon was flying towards Westruun, so going there was probably a really fucking stupid idea. On the other hand, they needed to go somewhere to find out what was going on, and Dr Dranzel’s Travelling Troupe was not built for wilderness survival – they weren’t incapable, but they did a lot better in cities and towns than in villages and woods (you couldn’t be a traveling troupe and not have ways to survive on the road and defend yourself against danger, but they weren’t hunters, and they weren’t warriors: they were musicians). And they were all fairly social beings who would go mad with only each other for company and never seeing new faces. So there was that. And besides, if they found the situation in Westruun intolerable, they could leave. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d had to sneak out of a city under the cover of darkness to avoid people they would rather not have dealings with. Mind you, sneaking out under the nose of a dragon would probably be just a bit more challenging, but what was life without a bit of adventure, Kent asked.  _Safer_ , Kaylie thought.  _And longer_ . But also probably more boring.

Westruun, when they arrived, was in uproar, and they almost turned away without entering the city, joining the refugee groups who were fleeing the city towards Kymal. Kaylie bore no great love for Kymal, but if the Westruun people were this desperate to leave the city, then anything would be better. In fact, they’d even joined up with one group that looked like they were able to defend themselves, when the dragon attacked. Spouting acid at the fleeing population, and cutting off their line of escape, made it obvious without the dragon having to use words that they were to stay in Westruun.

“So this is a fine pickle we’ve got ourselves into,” Kaylie observed, once they’d found their way into an abandoned house, slightly worse for wear, but all present and accounted for.

“We’ll just have to put our clever heads together and ride out the situation,” Dr Dranzel said. 

Dr Dranzel’s troupe were not adventurers. They knew some low-level magic and had some proficiency with weapons, but that was not much against a dragon. Vox Machina would probably have fared better, Kaylie thought. In fact, didn’t they brag about having killed two or three of them in the past? Kaylie knew Scanlan’s type, and would take everything he said with a grain of salt until independently verified by at least two reliable sources (Kingslayer,  _really_ ?), but still. They did seem the type of crazy that could potentially go up against a dragon for shits and giggles and come out of it on the other side with minimal scarring and lots of gold. They had access to magic she could only dream of, and they had strong fighters, and even a cleric, too! Chances were, they’d been in Greyskull Keep when the dragon attacked, and could have made their way unseen to safety (wherever safety was). Unless, of course, they’d gone and attacked the dragon. Kaylie didn’t know her father very well, she’d met him once, and had spent half of that time trying to kill him and the other half escaping from jail with him, but she thought, from what she had seen and heard of him, that going up against a dragon half-cocked sounded like the kind of stupid impulsive shit he’d do. She voiced this thought to the others, and they agreed. That didn’t make her feel better. 

Kaylie was convinced it was Zedd who damned them. He just had to say “it can’t get worse than this.” The next day the giants moved in; because of course the dragon wasn’t bad enough on its own. Where before escape had been fiendishly difficult, now it seemed almost impossible. Somehow, they found themselves in a network of people operating underground to smuggle those who most needed it out, and smuggle supplies in: not that there were many supplies coming in. For the most part, Westruun was on its own. Dr Dranzel’s troup were entertainers, not heroes, but well, someone had to do  _something_ . 

They settled into what was almost a routine – get people through the sewers without being eaten by monsters, go through houses for anything valuable that might have been hidden to give the dragon, never having quite enough to eat, never feeling relaxed enough to sleep without posting watches. The silverware from Greyskull Keep and the gold she’d won off Scanlan had been portioned out between the first few batches of loot. Kaylie had tried to save a single silver teaspoon (because it might come in handy to have some reserves one day, certainly not out of  _sentiment_ ), but had to give that up, too, eventually. Except of course, each day brought new dangers, and ducking into alleyways or basements of empty houses while chased by a giant/bandit/dragon would never be  _routine_ .

They moved every few days, never spending more than two weeks in the same space. The giants searched the houses, and most of the obvious hiding places like warehouses, with regular frequencies. Kaylie thought they did it just for funsies, really. Terrifying the populace: fun for the whole tribe! 

And then of course Scanlan Shorthalt showed up, and chaos followed. She had a feeling that was often the way with Scanlan Shorthalt (her father – and maybe they had something in common, but the love for chaos was definitely not one of them. Definitely not) – that he just rushed in, did some magic or told some lies, and then dealt with the fallout. It was lucky for him, lucky for all of them, that he was so good at dealing with the fallout. Pretty much the first thing he said was:

“We have a bit of a problem,” and then “they're going to come in and kill all of us,” and “we're in a bit of a time crunch.” Because of course he was. _Of course_ he fucking was. And then he conjured up the head of an apparently dead goliath and they saved the day together using some sleight of hand, magic, and performance tricks. Seriously, how had that even _worked_? That _should not_ have worked, and while she was really relieved they hadn’t all been discovered and dragged to the town square for execution, part of her was angry at him for being so pleased with himself that things had worked out that he forgot how very nearly they hadn’t, because he never thought of the consequences, did he, never thought that oh, maybe some of this very long list of women I’ve seduced in my lifetime might have left a child behind, and maybe I should check on them because maybe they might like to get to know their father before they were adults and ready to kill him and… she might still have some unresolved issues with him. Possibly. Maybe.

But the unresolved issues remained unresolved, because the very next thing they did was kill the goliath leader and apparently the new leader was someone much more amenable to negotiation, and then suddenly they were heading out to kill the dragon, all of them: Vox Machina, the goliaths, and what little Westruun still had in terms of a fighting force. And Kaylie, staying behind, realised she really didn’t want him to die. She had unresolved issues, but she really wanted the chance to resolve them, with him. And maybe he was a scoundrel, and maybe he had abandoned her mother without a thought to the consequences, and maybe he did rush in and mess things up, but eventually he did sort them out, though some quick thinking and quick talking. And he was her father. Besides, he killed a dragon and freed a town: that was pretty fucking badass. As he left her in Kymal, making heartfelt promises to make things right and be the kind of father she needed him to be, she asked him for an extra promise: to stay alive. He gave her a ring and his magic sword and for the first time in a long time, Kaylie thought things might actually turn out alright. 

 


End file.
